The mana is nice, and the extra damage it heals you is equivalent to 12 DR. So a level 10 has 32 DR at a minimum (without vine form), vs monsters doing half damage. Plus extra mana. Still, I'm not sure if it's better or worse than the monk.

Made a run with elf sorcerer in Slime Pit and was really nice.Didn't prepped any god, but an extra altar. Found the Matyr Gloves early (same for Meat Man, the Tower of Goo i found sadly really late). Early WEYWUT was nice once i hit 20 mana = 2 firefalls + slowed enemy for free hit. If one slows the monster before hand one of the fireballs is for free. With this level+4 kills were accessible God selection wasn't awesome but nice. (TT, Binlor, Dracul and GG (really late)). So joined Binlor at the time most of the map was explored = 3-4 layers of stone skin. Bought later the Agnostic Collar, which resulted in 4 more stone skins.

The combo with WEYWUT brought me to the idea, that early JJ could be nice. WEYWUTT + boosting mana even more (my impression was that the build was rather mana intensive and that i lost much black space just to refill my mana. with a larger mana pool one might have a better chance to kill enough to just level) and later joing someother god, EM would probably great.

Random thought:the witchalock pendant would be really awesome for this strat, free 20% physical resist for most of our attacks

Codex + Monk/Priest/Thief/sorcerer + EM is my default "clear pretty much anything without too much mental effort" combo these days (or rather was the last time I played intensively).

Halfling priest of EM with Codex is particularly brutal. The added bonus is that whatever would retaliate fireball on it's own still only retaliates once, so Codex EM makes cursed oasis a bit jokey (the shades don't blink either). It's one of the "peak of the power curve" combos. In fact there are no kind words to describe it except fun.

EM is by far the best. Imawal something small (a plant), spam entanglement if you have to (at least once to start), kill something with fireballs (the final one has first strike), use clearance to get mana back up (but pick your targets carefully so you don't overdo it). Fun. It's a bit too good, really, so you get bored eventually (mostly because of spammable entanglement).

EDIT: And speaking of B2P, B2P fit's it like a charm. So does the Bloodmage, now that I think about it... Pick up entanglement, hit with bigass fireball, hit B2P twice, entanglement, hit with bigass fireball, B2P twice, finish off monster with first striking bigass fireball. Repeat. Use IMAWAL before and fight something unreasonably above your level.

Come to think of it, I think you can lvl1 or 2 kill Jormungandr in Southern Swamp with a Codex EM bloodmage if you explore a bit in order to get 10 mana. Or was it a codex drac bloodmage? I'm sure I've done it but I can't remember now... EDIT: Went with gnome bloodmage (wasn't such a hot choice) just now, killed him at lvl3. Witchalok pendant was good, but I'm sort of kind of sure it can be done at lvl2.